After a long week at work there’s nothing better than putting your feet up and enjoying a nice bottle of wine or a few cold beers on a Friday evening, but what everybody wants to know is ‘will it stop me losing weight?’

Well the short answer is yes! Unfortunately alcohol has a very negative effect on weight loss. For one there is that late night desire for something hearty and satisfying, not to mention the following day when nothing but a greasy fry up is worth getting out of bed for. But first let me explain why it’s simply impossible to burn fat whilst you have alcohol in your body.

A by-product of alcohol called acetate is toxic to the body. This means that removing alcohol takes precedent over everything else, including burning fat. Now each unit of alcohol will take one hour to be completely removed from your system, so if you’ve had a bottle of wine, that’ going to put your fat burning on hold for a good 9 hours. That’s 9 hours your liver could have been working hard metabolising that unwanted fat!

So what is it about drinking that makes us so hungry? Now that’s simple. Remember how your liver was working so hard to get that nasty acetate out of your blood? Because it was so preoccupied it forgot to do one of its other jobs, produce glucose. This causes our blood sugar to drop and the cravings to start.

Have I done enough to turn you t-total?

What if I told you there were 7 calories in each gram, not to mention the sugar in wine and beer.

Still not going to give up the vino?

Thought not, so let’s see which drinks are going to do the least damage:

Spirits with Sugar Free Mixer – Top of the list, with no sugar and roughly 55kcal a measureWine – 3 – 5 grams of sugar and around 130kcal in a 175ml glassBeer, Lager, Cider, Stout – With at least 8 grams of sugar and 200kcal per pint, these are definitely a no go for anyone trying to lose weight.

My advice, if your having a moderate drink make sure you have a good evening meal like the ones set out in Optimum Nutrition to prevent those late night cravings and stick to spirits with diet mixers.